Open source as civic infrastructure
At Aberdeen Dream.scot CIC we treat open source not as a hobby, but as public infrastructure. When the tools a community relies on are developed openly, the community can inspect them, repair them, and adapt them to its own needs — exactly as it should be with anything that belongs to the public.
Our work in this area covers four directions:
- Open software. The PAL family of applications — small, focused Linux desktop tools built on Fedora with KDE Plasma and GNOME, released under the Apache License 2.0 — shows what a small Scottish organisation can contribute back to the commons.
- Open and local artificial intelligence. We study and promote AI models that can run locally, respect privacy, and remain under the user’s control, and we follow European regulation of artificial intelligence closely.
- Open business models. Cooperatives and community interest companies prove that sharing source code and sharing prosperity are the same idea. We collect and publish examples from Aberdeen and beyond.
- The register of open solutions. A curated, growing register of open-source solutions relevant to civic life — software, hardware, and methodologies — maintained by our technical department.
Why it matters
Proprietary systems decide for their users; open systems let their users decide. For young people entering the technology profession, reading and modifying real source code remains the fastest honest education there is. For citizens, open source means no lock-in and no hidden telemetry. For a community interest company, it is simply the right way to build.
Would you like to talk about an open-source project, or suggest a solution for the register? Please use the In touch page.